A Trustworthy Man

A man is not measured by who enters or exits his life. He is not measured by the circumstances that surround him. He is measured by how he faces those circumstances and by who he chooses to be regardless of others. The hardest part about being trustworthy is in finding others who are equally trustworthy

My son, Josiah is such a man.  He is trustworthy. It is one of his greatest qualities. He is trustworthy even, at time, to his own detriment.  It makes him a hero to me.

Every man has his own measure of how he views himself and others.  That measure takes into consideration the thoughts, feelings and expectations that are embedded in the DNA of relationships. This means that a key factor in building relationships is understanding the measure of others. 

The closer your standard of measure, the greater strength and depth you can foster in the relationship. 

If the standard of measure has a wide gap, here will be a limit to the level of relationship.  Carry that relationship too far or too deep and the separation found in that measure will bring disappointment and pain.

The Bible warns us about being “unequally yoked”.  We tend to apply this to marriages and relationships on the basis of faith and belief in God.  I believe that this principle has much greater meaning. Many people of faith, who believe in God, still have different priorities and ideas about who or what is important in their lives. 

A trustworthy man is slow to relate and to trust because once he enters a relationship, he is all in. His loyalty runs deep.  He also looks for the person on the other side of that relationship to place the same level of value on that relationship. He enters such relationships slowly because he knows that if that measure is not “equally yoked”, there will be pain. A trust worthy man is often he one who has the hardest time trusting because others do not share his value of trust.

For such a man, and for all of us, the key is to learn how to recognize the measure that others hold in their own lives. Once you can identify that, you can develop an idea of the strength a relationship will have.  When you understand the priorities of another person, you learn to anticipate and expect how that person will respond.  You develop an idea of what level of strength and trust can apply to that relationship to keep it healthy.

To the trustworthy – never stop being trustworthy. It is a rare quality in a person. Others will not understand it.  They will even try to capitalize on your loyalty.  But in the end, there will be those who enter your life who share the same values. Such are the relationships of men like David and Jonathan, or James and John in the Bible.  Their loyalty toward one another changed the course of history.

To the trustworthy – you are a hero.

A New Name

This week marks the end of an era. Life happens in seasons and like chapters in a book, those seasons have a beginning and an end.  The church that I have the privilege of pastoring has come to the end of such a chapter.  For nearly twenty years, we have been known to our community as Bethesda Church.  

This week we transition into a new name – 

Connection Church.

The name change is not just a transition, but rather one part of a seismic shift that our church has undergone.  Much like a person experiences during a coming of age or entering a marriage, entering a new season of life brings on new joys and challenges. It is a time when you have the opportunity to embrace fresh ideas, insights, plans and dreams. It is also a time that can necessitate the release of certain ideas, insights, plans and dreams.  It is a time for change and that is a good thing because 

growth without change is impossible.

What’s in a name? Your name defines you to others.  Every name carries with it meaning and that meaning should reflect who you are.  There are numerous instances in scripture where God changed the name of an individual based on a shift that had occurred in his or her life.  Jacob became Israel. Simon became Peter. Saul the persecutor became Paul, the Apostle.

I identified our transition as a seismic shift.  A seismic shift is caused by a movement in the earth that creates tremors of enormous proportions or, earthquakes.  These tremors usually have highly significant consequences.  We are living in a day and time when the earth is being shaken.  More accurately, the earth’s culture is being shaken.  That follows scripture which instructs: “…that which  can be shaken will be shaken…”  That instruction continues: “…when the shaking is done, that which cannot be shaken will remain.”  We are living through such a shaking in our world. Obviously one goal is to be standing when the shaking stops.  However, our goal became more defined.  We are looking to those who are being shaken.  How will they survive? What will be left of them when the shaking occurs in their life? 

This seismic shift challenged us in several ways.  One, what needed to shaken free of our own lives? Two, how prepared are we to reach those who have been or are being shaken? Three, how are we positioned to actually reach those who need to be reached?

This drew us to a redefining of our purpose.  In order to reach people, bring healing to their lives and help them not only put the pieces together, but discover purpose, we needed to become more relational.  We were becoming connectors.  Our vision took on fresh meaning as we embraced the concept of connectivity – connecting to God, to each other, and to our community – all for the purpose of developing Kingdom relationships and fulfilling God’s desire in the lives of the people He loves.

So our name changed to represent who we are and what we do. 

Our purpose is to establish an atmosphere where specific relationships can be fostered and developed. 

The first and foremost is the development of a relationship with God that is not just a Sunday experience, but a real straightforward 24/7 relationship with Him. Next, we want to foster relationships within our church family that not only recognize, but add dimension to the value of each individual life.  Third, we want that relational atmosphere to impact the people in our community, creating an environment where we can demonstrate the true love and light of Jesus Christ, and where, through the process, people can come to recognize the value and their need of being connected to God.

A new era – a new vision – a new name. 

                                     We are Connection Church. 

Limiting Parental Access At School

It has been a while since my last blog.  We are in the middle of a HUGE transition at our church. 

Next week we are changing our name and re-introducing ourselves to the community as CONNECTION CHURCH.

This has come after three years of preparation and we are very excited to see what God will do.

Part of the reason for the name change is to better identify with how we relate...to God, to each other and to our community.  In the interest of community relations, we have had a difficult situation occur this week regarding our school system.  I personally did not want to divide my focus during the transition we are facing, but considering our commitment to community involvement and the detrimental nature of the problem, i found myself compelled to become involved.

There is a new policy in place in our school which greatly limits parental access to the classroom of their children.  I have sat in on the school board meeting, approached and met with school board officials and have communicated my concerns with local media, as well as encouraging others to do so.  In this blog, I will post an editorial scheduled to run in this week's local paper, The Coastal Courier. I offer this advance copy to my friends and readers to ask you to pray for a positive solution to the conflict our school system and community are facing.

Liberty County School Classroom Parental Observation Policy

There is a great deal of controversy that has arisen in the wake of a policy that was put into place in the Liberty County School System. This policy affects a parent’s ability to access his or her child’s classroom for the purpose of observation.  Those behind the policy maintain that its sole purpose is to protect children and teachers from outside dangers.  They communicate that his policy is about limiting school access in the interests of safety. However, the people being limited are not unknown people. They are the parents who registered their children for school, met with teachers and administrators, and pay taxes into the school system.

The same policy that removes almost all parental observational access from the classroom has requirements for visits to the school. They include sign-ins, a requirement of legal guardianship of a student in the school, and even a provision to require photo identification to be presented upon entering school property.  The only exception to these requirements occurs on days when there are special events, when a parent and community residents -meaning anyone - can enter the building unescorted, walk unnoticed into a crowd of most or even all of the students.  If this policy is about safety, this issue should be addressed. The ability for a stranger to walk into the crowd is a far greater and more realistic threat than the likelihood of a stranger to enter school grounds and especially a classroom on a given day.

In these times, our children must be protected in the classroom and the school system has a daunting task of maintaining their safety. This issue has been spun as a safety issue. Yet, while it does little to address real safety, it does offer a great deal to protect teachers from unannounced observation by a concerned parent. To call it a safety policy damages the credibility of the system and the trust between parents and teachers. It makes it more difficult to deal with both issues.     

Today’s teachers are limited in how they can maintain discipline and order in a classroom. As a result, there are things that can occur which can greatly hinder a child’s ability to learn. Teachers often resort to raised voices in the classroom and occasionally, the classroom environment becomes unruly – even chaotic, which can be confusing and even damaging to a child. Such an environment can promote misgivings or even fear in a child and in so doing, can paralyze that child’s ability to perform and produce in the classroom, resulting in greater failure, not only academically, but in the child’s ability to relate with the teacher as an authority figure.

A child’s greatest hope in that moment is for his or her parent to have a real understanding of what is occurring in the classroom – not what is occurring in a pre-planned 20 minute observation visit, but what is occurring in the chaotic moments.  Should a parent have unfettered access? No. But a parent should be able to address an immediate concern, approach an administrator and, with that administrator, enter a classroom in that moment if there is reason for the parent to believe that the classroom environment is detrimental to the child.  This is no different than the policy that the Division of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) imposes on a household if even one concern of a child reaches their attention.  If the classroom environment is as it should be, you have the reinforcement of witness of the administrator.  If the classroom environment is jeopardizing the learning process, it has a greater chance of being recognized and addressed properly through the administrator.

Over the course of a year, a child will spend the better part of 180 days at school. Counting a seven hour day, this means aside from extra-curricular activity, that a child will spend in excess of 1,200 hundred hours in the authority of his teachers and school administrative staff. Under this policy, unless federally mandated, a parent is only allowed to observe his child in a learning environment for 40 minutes of those 1,200 hundred hours. 72,000 minutes of school – 40 minutes of observation – preplanned, pre-prepared observation.   That is a ratio of 1/1800 minutes.

The school system touts that it wants the parents to be involved in the education process, but in reality, this policy only allows the parent to observe the classroom environment – the most important environment - for one minute per thirty hours of school.

I respectfully ask this board to reconsider this policy. Parents need greater access than this to the classrooms and teachers of our children.  You need to consider that you are sending the message that this policy is not simply about security and protecting students and staff, but about also protecting staff from a child’s voiced concerns, and about limiting a parent’s access to ascertain true information regarding that child’s concerns.